Authors: Dennis Wheatley
Mary did not reply, but she was thinking, ‘You don’t realise it, my gay boyo, but you are escorting a blonde home here and now, and with a little luck, it’s a pretty dance she is going to lead you!’ After a moment, she asked: ‘What did you think of the lecture?’
‘The first part made sense. Everything these people say about reincarnation is so logical that there seems no answer to their arguments in support of it.’
‘Yes, there’s something awfully reasonable about regarding the world as a school at which we get a move up, or not, at the opening of each new term as a result of the good or bad marks we have earned the term before. It is much more attractive than the idea of a Day of Judgment on which everyone is tried on their performance in a single life and either carried up to heaven or thrown down to hell, for all eternity.’
‘I don’t mind paying up for my lapses,’ Barney remarked, ‘but, like old Omar Khayyám, I feel that when the last Trump sounds we’d be justified in saying to God, “You made me as I am, so what about it?” ’
Mary laughed. ‘I don’t think I’d have the courage to do that; and I really am on the way to becoming a reincarnationist. To have made one’s own bed and have to lie on it until one can make a better is the sort of treatment no one could reasonably complain about.’
‘True enough; but these Theosophists aren’t content to accept the basic teaching, and they’ve gone right off the rails somewhere. How could that American woman, or anyone else, really know about these big shots who are supposed to ordain all that happens in the world. If one took literally what she said about the two great Masters living on either side of a valley in Tibet, it would conjure up a picture of two elderly crap players throwing the dice, one of whom is an American and the other a Russian. As for the Master the Count, if he ever had any existence outside the wildest imagination, I’ll bet that by this time his castle in Hungary has been taken over as a free holiday resort for good little Marxists, and that the Reds put the skids under the old gentleman long ago.’
‘Of course, you’re right.’ Mary laughed again. ‘And people like Leadbeater and Arundale may have been honest to begin with, but like the ambitious priests of other religions they became corrupted by the power that being leaders of the movement had given them. I haven’t the least doubt that they invented all that nonsense about the Hierarchy and their contacts with the Master M. and Koot what’s-his-name, just to make their followers treat them as though they were little gods themselves.’
By this time they had arrived in front of the tall old house in which Mary had her flat. As they faced one another, after a moment’s hesitation, she said: ‘It’s not very late. Would you like to come up and share my supper?’
‘I’d love to,’ he gave her a quick smile, ‘if that wouldn’t be robbing you too badly.’
Oh no! That is, if you don’t mind something simple, like scrambled eggs?’
‘What could be nicer?’
Having been frustrated in his intention of cultivating Ratnadatta, he had decided to ask Mary out to dinner again in the hope that through her he might learn more about the Indian, pending his next chance to get hold of him, which would not be for another week; so her invitation, while it took him by surprise, could not have pleased him better. But as he followed her into the house and upstairs, he felt that it would be wise to keep off the subject for a while, at least; as he thought her such a prickly pear that she might fly into a temper unless he handled her very tactfully.
Mary, meanwhile, was regretting that she could not give him the sort of supper she had prepared the previous week, and wishing that she had tidied up her sitting-room before going out. But she had bought fresh flowers the day before, and the bottle of Hock was still unopened.
While Barney laid the table and opened the wine, she cooked a dish of scrambled eggs, bacon and tomatoes, and as they called to one another during these preparations the very naturalness of this little domestic scene put them more at their ease than they had so far been when together.
Over the meal he got her talking about her work as a model, and of films she had recently seen; so by the time they lit cigarettes with their coffee, her mind was a long way from the supernatural and it came as quite a shock when he asked:
‘How did you get on last Saturday?’
His question had been quite casual, but it instantly brought back to her the scene in the Temple. Swiftly averting her eyes, she played for time. ‘On Saturday? What do you mean?’
‘Why, you told me you were going to meet that chap Ratnadatta again.’
‘Er… yes; of course.’
He smiled at her. ‘Well, how did the party go?’
‘Oh, much the same as on the previous Saturday.’
‘Just Yoga, and that sort of thing?’
She nodded.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’d like to learn a bit about Yoga. Will you take me along to Ratnadatta’s place one evening?’
‘No. I couldn’t do that. I’m not a member and one has to be introduced by somebody who is.’
‘I see. Well anyway, you might let me have the address; then I’ll write him a line and ask him if he will introduce me.’
‘I can’t. I don’t know it.’ The moment she had spoken she realised that she had made a stupid admission which might lead him to suppose that something less innocent than Yoga went on there, but he only shrugged and remarked:
‘Of course, I’d forgotten. He blindfolds you when he takes you there, doesn’t he?’
‘Oh no.’ She quickly retrieved her error. ‘I made that up just as I did about the Great Ram and his black imp, and all the other things I told you. The only reason I can’t give you the address is that I didn’t hear Ratnadatta give it to the taxi-driver either time, and it is in a district that I’ve never been to before; so all I know is that it’s somewhere up in North London.’
Barney knew that she was lying, and it was clear that she did not mean to tell him anything, so he said: ‘It doesn’t matter. I meant to ask Ratnadatta tonight about his Yoga circle, but I didn’t get the chance. I’ll have another shot when I see him at Mrs. Wardeel’s next week.’
He then tactfully changed the conversation, but her reaction to his questions worried him. As she did not know where the place was to which Ratnadatta took her that meant that he really did blindfold her when taking her there; and he would not do that unless something much more sinister than the innocent practice of Yoga went on at his circle. That being so, she must be playing with fire and might get herself badly burnt. If she would, or could have let him go with her next time she indulged her curiosity about occult mysteries, that would have been one thing;
but for her to continue going on her own to these parties was quite another. In consequence, after they had talked cheerfully again for a further half-hour, and he stood up to go, he said:
‘Listen, Margot. You’re a queer girl, and a bit of a mystery, living on your own like this with no family and apparently very few friends. But I like you a lot, and I’m worried about you.’
She smiled at him. ‘Why should you be? There are lots of girls like me earning a living in London on their own.’
‘Not many who are so darn good-looking,’ he grinned back. ‘But that’s beside the point at the moment; and I’ll tell you why I’m worried. I was watching your face this evening when that old crystal-gazing bag told you that you were heading for trouble.’
‘What, with a fair-haired boy-friend? Don’t worry. I’m not a precocious school girl, to be lured to her fate by the offer of a ride in a Jaguar.’
‘Of course not. But I mean before she mentioned him. It was when she warned you to watch your step. She rang a bell then; because for a moment you looked as if you were scared to death. You are frightened of something. I’m sure of it. And I’ve a hunch that Mr. Ratnadatta is the cause. He may only be teaching you Yoga exercises at the moment, but you know yourself, or anyhow suspect, that it’s leading up to something pretty dangerous. I want you to cut Ratnadatta out. Promise me not to go with him to this place again, there’s a good girl.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that; and, as I’ve told you, I’m quite capable of looking after myself.’
‘Well, cut him out for the time being, then. Come and dine and dance with me again. Let’s put on our glad rags on Saturday and go to the Berkeley.’
For a moment Mary hesitated. Ratnadatta had not asked her to meet him on Saturday; he had even implied that it might be some weeks before he took her to the Temple again, so why should she not accept Barney’s invitation?
‘Very well,’ she said, accompanying him to the door of
the flat, ‘I’d love to; and I’m awfully sorry about our last evening together having been such a flop. As a matter of fact, I’d formed a little plan to make amends.’
‘You had nothing to make amends for. That was up to me for having ruined your dress.’
‘No, it was my fault, and if I’d had any sense I’d have asked you to bring me back here at once so that I could change it; then we could have gone up there again, and still had a couple of hours’ dancing. But that never occurred to me, and next day I felt awful about the way I’d treated you. I expected to see you at Mrs. Wardeel’s last Tuesday and meant to ask you here to supper as some compensation for having ruined Saturday evening. If you had been there you would have fared much better than you have tonight; Westphalian ham, fresh salmon and all the trimmings.’
‘Really?’ A delighted grin spread over Barney’s face. ‘Margot, you
are
a dear. If it wouldn’t be taking advantage of your having asked me up to your flat, I’d kiss you. But sometime, perhaps. Anyway, see you Saturday. I’ll come down about 7.30 to pick you up; and thanks for this evening. Goodnight.’
With a look of astonishment on her face, Mary stared at his curly hair and broad shoulders as he went down the first flight of stairs. ‘Taking advantage’ of her! She could hardly believe she had heard aright. Of all the men in the world, Barney Sullivan was the very last she would have expected to let his evident desires be hampered by old-fashioned notions about chivalrous conduct. Could it really be possible that the leopard had changed his spots?
Turning on the lower landing, Barney gave her a cheerful wave, then disappeared from her view. As he descended the rest of the stairs he was thinking. ‘She really is a peach, and there can be no doubt about it that she likes me. Saturday should be fun. I wish to God, though, that she wasn’t mixed up with that swine Ratnadatta.’
Not being aware that Mary had no appointment with the Indian on Saturday, he went on to congratulate himself on having anyhow stalled her off from going to the circle again
for, as he thought, another eleven days; and that, he hoped, would be enough for him to queer Ratnadatta’s pitch with her altogether.
Having nothing special to report that week, Barney did not go to the office until Friday, and then only because C.B. had sent for him. The Colonel’s reason for doing so was to show him the list of people who paid money into the bank account of the Manual Workers’ Benevolent Society. Giving him a copy of the pass-book sheets for the past year, Verney said:
‘Sit down and take a gander over that, young feller. Those are the boys and girls who wittingly, or unwittingly, finance some of these unofficial strikes, and probably other Communist activities as well.’
Barney took the wad of sheets and ran his eye down one after another. In several instances there were in-payments of as much as a thousand pounds, and against these the names were nearly all foreign; but the great majority were British and most of them appeared regularly early in every month for amonts ranging from twenty to one hundred pounds. The contributors were men and women in about equal numbers but, apart from the names of a film star, a Conservative M.P., and a big motor-car manufacturer, they meant nothing to him.
Handing the list back, he said: ‘I don’t get it, Sir. To contribute such big sums, most of these people must be jolly well off. That’s not to say that some of them may not be generous enough to give lavishly to all sorts of charities; and presumably, in this case, they have no idea of the use to which their money is being put. But it seems odd that a Tory M.P. should cough up forty pounds a month regularly to a workers’ benevolent, and old Benson, who runs Roadswift Motors, has the reputation of a skinflint.’
‘I don’t get it either,’ agreed C.B. ‘During the past week we have managed to identify most of the contributors. They are all rich and there are a number of titled people among them. With the assistance of the Treasury we’ve worked it
out that, on average, they are putting into this show about twenty-five per cent of their incomes; and, super-tax being what it is, what in the world can induce them to do that? It doesn’t make sense. Neither do the bigger payments. One is from a Dutch bulb-grower, another from an Indian Rajah, a third from an Argentine meat shipper. They were all on visits to this country at the time their payments were made. Why should wealthy foreigners, who are here only temporarily, suddenly donate big sums to help along British working families that have struck it unlucky?’
‘Ask me another, Sir. Unless…’ Barney paused a moment, ‘unless they do know what the money is being used for and are fellow travellers. There are rich people who believe that Communism is bound to get the upper hand here in the long run, and this crowd may be paying a form of insurance to be allowed to hang on to the bulk of their fortunes if the worst happened.’
‘That’s a thought,’ Verney conceded. ‘But I can’t believe it is so. Short of our losing an atomic war, Britain is as safe from having a Communist Government in the foreseeable future as she is from being submerged by another flood. Awfully few rich people can be so batty as to believe otherwise. In any case, I’m convinced that the majority of the contributors can’t know the sort of thuggery they are supporting with their money. There is a Bishop among them, an Admiral and two Generals; all die-hard Tories who’d sooner be cut in pieces than knowingly contribute to Communist funds. I wanted you to look through the list, though, just in case you happened to know anything odd about any of them.’
Barney shook his head. ‘As no ranks or titles appear on cheques, and many of them are only surnames with initials, the only name I recognise at first sight, apart from the Tory M.P. and the motor-magnate, was that of Diane Duveen, and I should not have thought a little blonde smack-bot like that would have enough brain to be interested in any serious movement.’